


Proud and Wild Eyed

by Zoom Zoom (PaperLillyWebs)



Series: Three for a Wish [1]
Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Amnesia, Bittersweet Ending, But now with planned sequel where the boys get their shit together, Canon Timeline Bent to My Will, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Courting Rituals, Cultural Differences, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, I love Zelda really, M/M, Majora's Mask Elements, Meant to have a happy ending - it did not work out like that, Minor Violence, Post-Calamity Ganon, Pre-Calamity Ganon, Rito Link, Selectively Mute Link (Legend of Zelda), T for Blood, Temporary Character Death, That Pre-Calamity Angst (tm), Very Minor Retelling, implied PTSD, mask au, minor description of violence, some vague setting stuff, this is sadder than I meant it to be, ~Feelings~
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21856423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperLillyWebs/pseuds/Zoom%20Zoom
Summary: like some divine beast. a divinity befitting a monster.The masks had come to him when his mother still practiced magic, but it isn't until he's made the Hylian Champion that he understands why. Four masks to match his fellow champions, and one to keep all to himself.Or:Wherein Link sometimes has feathers, and he and Revali both get a little softer. The battle with Ganon does not change.
Relationships: Link/Revali (Legend of Zelda)
Series: Three for a Wish [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593391
Comments: 65
Kudos: 417





	1. One for Luck

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Funsighs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Funsighs/gifts).



> A gift for my struggling sib. This got wildly out of control of a short one shot, and it's entirely your fault. 
> 
>   
> Hylian Sign Language is treated as a secondary language in this, so is expressed in Italics and quotations; Link is mostly non-verbal, and implied to be spectrum.  
> 

Revali recognises him immediately. Knows it's him from the moment Elder Ylla brings him into the room. 

And having just come from Gerudo Town, where it had taken Urbosa  _ two months _ and a lengthy explanation to even consider that Link had been the tiny Gerudo vai snooping about the palace, Link isn't expecting Revali's twitch of surprise, nor his bemused scoff. 

"A southerner?" he snarks from the other side of the elder's roost, crossing his wings and looking Link directly in the eye.

Ylla doesn't notice, smiling all the while as he ushers Link towards the table where Nalle has laid out cups for three. "Revali!" the elder booms happily, seemingly oblivious to the way Link's feathers puff flusteredly around his neck. "I didn't expect you back so early, or I would have sent for you. This is Llac, indeed from one of the Southern tribes." He gestures Link forward, and it takes all of Link's training to meet the other Champion's gaze. 

Revali is, of course, having the time of his life, his eyes over-bright with mirth. He looks Link's Rito body up and down, managing a, "Llac, hm?" through a beak clenched in laughter. 

"Please, have a seat, Llac," Ylla says, gesturing to one of two cushions across the table from his own seat. Link glares at Revali as soon as Ylla is occupied with pouring the tea, daring him to give Link's secret away. "Revali, I thought you would be out late on Vah Medoh with her highness."

Revali doesn't join them at the table, instead leaning against the balcony doorway where he'd been observing the roosts settling down for the afternoon. "Her highness is translating a passage on one of the consoles," he dismisses with a wave of his wing. "She does not need me there to babysit her."

Elder Ylla, ever composed in front of guests, still sighs. "Revali," he intones, and Link quite likes the way Revali is chastised just from this. He ruffles his feathers and looks back out the open doorway, as close to a pout as a proud Rito could get. Link hides a smirk behind a wing. 

The movement pulls Ylla's attention back to him, his magnanimous smile back in place as he hands a cup to Link. "You've traveled very far, young Llac. I'm afraid our inn is full, with her royal highness and her entourage, but we have a few empty roosts to spare if you don't mind sleeping so close to your Northern kin."

"I would actually prefer it," Link says immediately, the words tasting strange through an unfamiliar mouth. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Revali's whole body tense, and he has half a mind to wonder if he had ever heard Link speak, before. "But I have promised a friend I would join them at the Tabantha stables." He nods politely. 

"Suit yourself!" he chortles good-naturedly. "Revali, will you not join us properly?" He waves a wing to the empty cushion, but Revali turns up his beak. 

"I will not."

Ylla sighs and turns back to Link; he starts to wonder if this is how Revali has gotten away with such pride in the past, with the elder bending to his ward's whims so easily. "What brings you all this way, young Llac? I'll be the first to say your tribe is always welcome, but you seldom take us up on the offer."

Link wishes he had done more research before claiming to be from a known tribe. "I am curious," he finally says, and knows he's given the right answer as Ylla's expression softens. 

"As one should be! I would not keep you from your friend, but it is still quite early; would you join us for dinner?"

"I would like that." Link feels when Revali's eyes find him again, can almost pinpoint the exact moment he realises Link does not carry the Master Sword. Instead, he has a simple bow strung over his shoulder, a short blade holsted at his waist; did Revali really think him so much a fool to carry such a dead giveaway to his identity? No, the master sword is safely stored in the chest in his room at the inn. 

"I hope you won't mind her highness taking the seat at my table; I would normally have visiting kin in a place of honor, but for propriety's sake..."

"I do not mind, elder," Link is quick to say. "I would actually prefer as little fuss as possible."

Ylla clasps Link's upper arm in the way he's seen other Rito men greet each other. "That can be done. We dine at sundown, which this time of year is still two candles away. If you are as curious as you say, would you like a tour of the roost?"

Link has technically been given the tour already, but only as Princess Zelda's shadow, as a Hylian outsider. The whole purpose for his mask, for this body, is to see the Rito world as a Rito. 

"I would like that," he repeats softly, ducking his head. 

Revali scoffs so loudly that Link flinches. "Elder, it is clear this Rito does not like to speak," he drawls, the breeze through the open walls picking up his Champion's scarf and shaking his beads gently. With his thick gold plumage, Link only feels the chill of his words. 

"Revali," Ylla sighs, still gripping Link's arm. "It is rude to—" 

"Tell him we know how to read Sign and be done with it."

Link stills. He does not know Rito Sign, has never had cause to even know it existed; Hylian Sign is understood well enough in the kingdom, a sort of common tongue between the different races, but, well, Rito lack fingers. Link has never signed in front of Revali. 

Brightening, Ylla raises his wings to Link. "But this is a wonderful idea, young Llac!" He shoots an amused look at Revali, who huffs and turns back away. "You usually show so little care for your kin that I did not expect a sincere suggestion."

"Do not bad mouth me in front of the guests," he grumbles with little heat. 

"I–I do not— know Rito Sign," Link stammers, his own voice surprising himself. "Especially not a Northern dialect."

Ylla takes this in stride. "It is not so different from Hylian Sign. Save for the chicks, any Rito here will understand you well; if you do not wish to speak you do not have to."

Bewildered and a little stunned, Link haltingly signs,  _ "Thank you." _

"You're welcome, young Llac. Now, with the time before dinner, Revali will show you all the Hebra Rito have to offer." 

Revali's feathers immediately ruffle all the way down his wings, which should make him look threatening, but only reminds Link of a startled kitten, and he has to inhale his delighted laugh before it leaves his lips. His beak, he means. 

"Elder," Revali says slowly, as if in threat, "I am not a tour guide."

Ylla just smiles benignly, folding his feathers under his chin. "But you are the Rito Champion. Surely you would jump at the chance to boast the charms of your tribe."

_ "I would be honoured if the pilot of Divine Beast Vah Medoh would show me the rest of the village." _ Link swallows another laugh at Revali's betrayed gape. 

"See, Revali? Didn't you want even the Southern Tribes to know your name? This is your chance to spread your great deeds even further." So maybe Ylla wasn't  _ too  _ lenient with his ward. 

Revali physically pushes down his neck feathers and rights himself, giving a haughty scoff and a toss of his braids that fools no one. "If the elder wishes it. But I will not wait for you, if you fall behind."

_ "I won't." _

Revali simply turns up his beak. 

"Do the others know?" is the first thing Revali asks, as soon as they're out of earshot of Ylla's delighted laughter. 

Link shrugs, falling into pace just a step behind Revali as he looks about the main roost with new eyes. They are sharper, in this body, can see further and clearer, and Link finds himself quite enamoured with the texture of the canvas that the Rito hang over their doors. He wonders what it feels like under his feathers. 

Grumbling, Revali just short of stomps down one of the many bridges towards Rito's Landing where they can make for the Flight Range. "Can you even fly in that form?" he snaps, and Link shrugs again, having far too much fun riling him up. Revali had been intimidating only long enough for Link to realise they were the same age —he's still not positive which of them is older— and even if the Rito  _ could  _ best him with a bow, Link is not cowed by him anymore. 

"Oh, don't give me that. You were oh so eager to speak in front of the elder!"

_ "Did not know you could understand sign." _

"What, just because we don't have ugly Hylian fingers?"

_ "That's not very nice."  _

"Nevermind, I preferred you when you didn't speak."

Link just grins and waves at a passing Rito (Kol, he thinks — Link had met her first thing upon entering the village with Princess Zelda), who openly stares at the visitor. But she must see they have a destination in mind and does not stop them, only giving a warm smile and a wave back. 

Revali doesn't seem to notice, muttering to himself as he stomps to the end of the Landing. 

Link has had this mask, and the others, since he was a child. Just as he knows how to swim with a Zora's fins, he had been taught to fly with a Rito's wings. Not spectacularly, of course, but he's practiced recently enough, with the almost sole purpose of making sure that Revali could not laugh at him.

It does not make the drop from the Landing any easier to look at. 

"I meant it," Revali bites, shaking out his primaries. "I will not wait for you." With this, Revali summons his gale and launches into the sky with an ease Link yearns to match. 

But even the other Rito cannot match him, and Link accepts this as he steadies his heart and pushes off the edge of the Landing. And Link is fit, even when he puts on the masks, some sort of magic translating his built-up muscle to all the right places that he glides with ease away from the main village and towards the Flight Range. Above him, his sharp ears can still hear Revali grumbling, as if he had hoped Link would crash immediately. 

It is foolhardy, he knows, but oh, is Link ever such a fool. "Last one there is a red cucco,” he says just loud enough to be heard, before tucking in his wings and dive bombing for the ground. 

Revali lets out a squawk of protest and  _ follows him, _ diving after him with a few choice Rito obscenities shouted in his wake. 

Revali still beats him to the Range, but Link is smiling too hard to care. 

He lands rather clumsily, Revali automatically shooting out a wing to steady him. When he realises what he's done, he snatches his wing back and glares. 

"You should have known better than to challenge the pride of the Rito!" he says grandly, the single villager at the range quickly taking off at the sight of the Champion and his guest. Link starts to wonder if any of the others actually  _ like _ Revali.

_ "I knew you'd beat me," _ Link signs with a shrug, making his way to the edge of the deck. A Rito's nose is unparalleled, he realises, giddy with the thought that he can tell which direction the canyon winds come from, can smell the snow and sulfur and pine on the air. The updrafts smell of something wholly  _ Rito,  _ and warms him where his feathers do not. 

Revali slowly follows him, his plumage splendid even in the low light of the Range.

_ "How did you know it was me?" _

Revali scoffs, arms crossed behind his back as he looks out over the canyon. "Please, you have the same stupid look upon your face, no matter what form you take."

Link smiles crookedly at nothing in particular. He can see why Revali spends so much time here; he almost wishes he could come back as Link and try his Hylian limbs against the Rito's training course. 

"Dare I ask... how you came to be in this form? Surely it was not the Princess' doing."

Link shakes his head, and realises the sign for 'mask' really does require more precise movements than he knows how to make with his wings. "A magic mask," he says softly instead, that tension snapping back to Revali's shoulders. 

"I'm sure Princess Mipha knows of your silly mask, then; what did she say, seeing you like this?"

He turns his smile on Revali, pleased with the ruffle it puts to the feathers on his cheeks.  _ "She doesn't know I can become a Rito, only that I can become a Zora." _

"So you can— You can become  _ others?" _ Thoroughly scandalised, Revali's brows pinch together. "How many masks do you have?"

_ "Four. Well, five, but one of them doesn't do anything." _ Link turns away to inspect the rest of the Flight Range, and is warmed to see a fire pit with a few pots and cooking utensils on a nearby pine table, as if the warriors in training spent a great deal of time there. Then, he wonders how often Revali could be found here, and how often he had eaten alone. 

Which is silly, because Link had never cared before. (Except that he had, a foolish, teenage flutter in his chest since that first day on Rito's Landing, that hasn't settled since.) 

Revali does not follow immediately, and Link can almost see the wheels turning in his head. "Four... Four for the races of the Champions." 

_ "So you do have some brains after all." _

He snaps as glare to Link. "I reckon you've said more to me this afternoon than you have in the entirety of your service to the Princess."

_ "No need to be nasty." _ Link pouts, but he's used to such remarks, has had to face far worse since he was small; they only sting when coming from Princess Zelda, these days. 

"You do not get to lecture  _ me, _ 'Llac'. What sort of name is Llac anyways?" He joins Link at the fire pit and kicks a half-used piece of kindling. 

" _ It has the same meaning as my own,"  _ he signs.  _ "And a similar sign. It felt appropriate." _

Revali's fingers twitch at his sides. "A similar sign?" he prompts, as if fighting himself to say it. 

And Link is all too happy to show him, tapping three feathers to his chin and then miming a circle with both hands. "Llac," he says quietly, then taps his chin again and does his best to curl his feathers around each other like the links of a chain. "Link."

His companion is quiet for a moment, eyes never leaving Link's hands. Finally, he says, "You never speak in sign around the Princess."

Link winces and resists the urge to tell him that he doesn't know their relationship well enough to say that, but then Zelda has never been shy about her loathing for Link. Only in front of her father does she keep it in check. 

_ "I hardly speak at all," _ he says carefully, watching Revali's minute expressions shift and curl until it is a proper frown. 

"Then why do you speak so much, like this?"

Ah, but that answer is easy.  _ "I am not 'Link', like this." _

Revali pulls away just slightly and blinks, beak parted enough that Link has to stop himself from closing it for him. An understanding, then, Link decides, as Revali drops his gaze to the planks below their talons. 

With a determined shake, Revali straightens and looks down his beak at him, though Link is only a few inches shorter now. "Well, it is hardly any concern of mine how you communicate with her highness, or whatever fantasies deluded you into thinking you could fool  _ me _ with such a disguise. I won't tell anyone," he adds, unprompted, "because I'm sure Lady Urbosa knows of this and would pluck me bare if I did."

He only stiffens a little at Link's laugh.

Ylla seats Link with the other warriors in a great pavilion that Link has not seen before. All the Rito except those on watch eat the evening meal together, not unlike the knights in Link's barracks: families would often join for dinner, until the mess hall was abuzz with children's laughter and happy conversation. 

Revali sits across from Link and barely looks at him. Link is not surprised. 

Zelda eats with Ylla and his husband, Edle, and she had not spared Link a glance after their quick introduction; she doesn’t know the Hebra Rito well enough to realise they have a guest, and Link is happy to keep it that way. 

Kol had immediately sat next to him, and was indeed not phased at all by his signing. As captain of the archers, she is all too eager to learn of Southern Rito teachings; Link just hopes his half-truths are believable. 

He keeps an eye on Zelda, of course, watches her talk excitedly with Edle about her day's work on Vah Medoh, and he tells himself it only hurts a little that she doesn't seem to notice his absence. It is only after his fifth glance at the Princess that he feels Revali's gaze on him. 

And Link gets nothing from his expression, no indication to just what he is thinking. Did he pity Link, now that he understood more of their dynamic? Or would he use this as fuel, for more less-than-playful ribbing?

Link raises his chin and dares him to do either. 

Unbidden, Revali walks him to the edge of the village after dinner , where "Llac" is meant to fly to the Tabantha Stables, and Link is meant to return to the inn. 

Revali is silent the entire way, arms behind his back and gaze forward, and Link does not interrupt him. With such a late start to the day, he had not accomplished much, but he has high hopes for tomorrow, and the two months Zelda planned on staying with the Rito. 

Only when wooden bridges give way to grassy hills does Revali speak. "Was this charade only for today?"

_ "No." _ Link has to smile at that, at the almost hopeful light to Revali's expression.  _ "I want to learn more about the Rito, as a Rito. This is why the masks came to me, to better understand my fellow Champions." _ Revali does not make eye contact, but his firm gaze on Link's hands doesn't let him believe his attention is anywhere else. 

"Came to you...?" 

Daringly, Link reaches out and tugs on one of his braids. "A story for later," he says, half expecting Revali to try and bite his wing off for touching him. 

But Revali just stares at him, as if only just noticing their height difference has decreased. 

Link doesn't wait for him to gather his thoughts, stepping away and letting his fingers find the bottom of the mask, buried in the feathers of his chin. He still isn't quite sure what it looks like to outsiders, Mipha's answers have been rather vague and Daruk refused to witness it himself, but it's a pretty easy process, as far as magical transformations go.

It only hurts enough for his fingers to go numb sometimes, as his bones and muscles snap back to proper size and shape, and he doesn't even feel the warping of his spine anymore. Most of the time. 

Link shakes out his hair and tries not to yelp at the sudden cold, letting the mask drop to hang around his neck so he can search his pouches for the Snowquill headband the elder had gifted both he and Zelda upon arrival. When he looks up, Revali is only looking a little horrified. 

"I suppose it really is you," Revali finally manages, leaving Link bemused. 

_ "You were the one to recognise me immediately." _

"Well, thank Lady Medli that your sarcasm is still intact. I had considered going with you back to the inn, but if this is how you're going to act..."

For all his bluster, Revali turns away to walk instead of fly — slow enough for a laughing Link to follow. 

It is several days later that Zelda takes a break from research upon Vah Medoh, and instead holes herself up with Ylla and Edle in their home to learn more about the history of the village. Link is not a confident enough flyer to join the warriors doing drills at the Flight Range, and he has no business trying to tend to the chicks with Crin, but Zelda had sent him away as soon as he’d met her for breakfast, so he is left with little to do. As a Rito or a knight. 

Luckily (or unluckily), Revali doesn't take long to find him on one of the smaller landings, looking out over the valley. 

He snorts at Link's uncharacteristic forlornness, wings behind his back and Champion scarf fluttering in the breeze. "Well, 'Llac'," he announces haughtily, as if Link had not heard him approach. "Since you fly worse than a fledgling and aren't fit to be seen at the Flight Range, I, the Great Revali, have decided I am willing to teach you a thing or two." Link smoothes his expression into indifference. 

_ "No thanks." _

Revali splutters. "Any Rito would be honoured to be personally tutored by the Champion of Vah Medoh!"

_ "I am not a Rito,"  _ he signs and holds back a smile. 

"I'm starting to wonder,  _ Llac, _ whether or not you don't keep your silence around the Princess so that she has no cause to cut out your tongue!"

Link sobers, but signs,  _ "That could be it," _ anyways, and it only seems to aggravate Revali further. 

He watches Revali get a hold of himself and pat down his feathers, though his glare remains firmly in place. "I'm  _ trying _ here, Link. Where is the Hylian Champion from the stories? Demure and silent Link, 'the people's hero' Link? The Link who helps anybody who asks, no matter how small the task? Kind and virtuous Link—"

_ "You've listened to stories about me?" _

Revali throws up his wings. "You're insufferable! See if I ever try and help you again—"

Smiling, Link swings up to his feet and lightly pulls on one of Revali's braids, if just to see the mottled skin around his eyes go pink. "I know how to fly, Champion Revali. Perhaps your goodwill extends to teaching me your Gale?" Revali bristles, but Link doesn't give him a chance to respond.  _ "I'm kidding, calm yourself. But if you're so intent on 'helping me', would you take me to Vah Medoh?" _

Feathers still on end, Revali's openly-stunned expression is all the more amusing. "Take you to...? Ah, you were not with the Princess, when we landed last."

Link shakes his head; Princess Zelda always parted ways with him before leaving the village for her research: he has yet to even see more of the beast than her underbelly. And ever since the year before, ever since Revali's empty challenge to face one another on Vah Medoh's great wings, Link has not been able to dispel the thought from his mind. 

Besides, he's been aboard all the other divine beasts, it would be a shame if he missed one. 

Looking him up and down, Revali seems to give it a serious moment of thought. “I do not think you are a strong enough flyer to make it that height,” he says, and it does not sound like an insult, not like before. 

And despite having the worst temperament of anyone Link has ever met, he does trust Revali's judgement: an amateur flyer would never have mastered Revali's Gale. 

So Link sighs and looks wistfully up as Vah Medoh flies over head. According to Zelda, it requires far more energy to take off than it does to keep her flying, so Revali does not land her often; better to keep her in the air than land her on a whim of curiosity. 

"Oh, for the love of— Stop looking so  _ plaintive!  _ Just— Put out your wings." Bewildered, Link obeys. Revali spins him around and grabs him under the arms, a muttered, "Brace yourself," Link's only warning before they're surrounded by a column of wind. 

Link makes a sound he could never manage as a Hylian, a high trill of terror as Revali's Gale launches them from the deck and into the air. Even a swimming Zora cannot match the speed that Revali takes him up into the clouds, cold wind ripping through his feathers until tears form in his eyes. The lift beneath his wings shouldn’t feel so different from when he’s flown before, but it  _ does, _ and the only thing he can think is that Vah Medoh couldn’t have chosen a better pilot.

Revali releases him suddenly, when they’re so high that Link can barely see Rito’s Landing and Medoh looms like Castle Town before them; only instinct allows Link to catch himself before he plummets.

Flying above him, Revali guffaws and Link almost pitches to the ground anyways: he had half believed Revali could only laugh at someone else’s expense. His smiles have always been sneers, his compliments underhanded insults, and Link has never given thought to Revali being  _ happy. _

He watches in awe as Revali pushes himself to go faster, cutting through the sky as Vah Medoh slowly banks to the left as if to meet them halfway. Link cannot remember the other champions ever controlling their beasts without touching them.

Revali lets him crash-land this time, stood back and watching in amusement as Link trips over his talons and nearly falls on his face. 

"You really do look like a Southerner," he snarks, Link with half a mind to trip his feet out from under him. "You certainly fly like one."

Even this high up, something of Vah Medoh's magic must quiet the wind, so they do not have to shout to be heard, even as Link feels it whip around them. Unlike the other Divine Beats, Medoh is blanketed in green, in flowers and trees and springs, as if the ancient Sheikah had built her to one day carry them all away from Hyrule. 

Revali had once bragged that Vah Medoh was made special, different than the others, and Link had privately agreed. 

_ "Do Rito from the South not fly regularly?"  _ he asks once he's steady. 

Revali shrugs and turns away to lead him to the nearest fountain, topped with an odd stone cucco with an eerily Hylian-shaped face. "It is easier to fly in warmer air; they do not learn to fly in the sorts of winds the Hebra Rito do."

Link hmms and passes his hand under the beak-shaped spigot, letting icy water cut rivulets through the barbules of his feathers and marveling that he can somehow still  _ feel it, _ without it touching his skin. In his periphery, Revali observes him silently, leant towards him oddly, and startles when Link turns to smile at him. 

"Is it hard?" Link asks softly, straightening from the fountain. "Keeping her in the air?"

"Not... Not usually," Revali murmurs, his gaze now on his feet. "She was built to move continuously, unlike the other Beasts."

"Princess Zelda mentioned they run on the Champion's souls; does it not get tiring?"

"Why all the questions?" Revali deflects, and Link only knows it's deflection from how often he hears it from Zelda. "You didn't have nearly so many, the last time you were here."

_ "I didn't care about the Champions, the last time I was here,"  _ Link tells him honestly — and if it's partially to see Revali's feathers ruffle, well, he doesn't need to know that. 

Revali eyes him with his hackles up, clearly sensing ulterior motives. "It really is unbecoming of a Champion of the people to lie so easily."

_ "Who says I'm lying?" _ Link frowns, turning to face him properly.  _ "Is it really so hard to believe?" _

"Yes," he bites back, crossing his wings over his chest. "You gain nothing by  _ caring _ about— us. You're still the wielder of the Sword that Seals the Darkness, still her highness' chosen hero."

_ "I didn't think you actually believed that I was in this for the glory." _

Revali freezes, something akin to panic in his eyes, but he must realise he can't run and leave Link stranded, and visibly forces himself to remain where he is. "Why else would you put up with her highness' disdain? With. With my own."

Link almost wants to laugh at the absurdity, that he would choose this life because he  _ wanted _ it, but he doesn't, because the reality of just why Revali showed him so much animosity sinks in, and if Link were anybody else, he might have given him a hug. "You make me sad," Link finally manages, letting out a breath that almost hurts his chest. 

With a squawk, Revali loses the forlorn expression for one of rage instead, but Link holds up his wings before he can argue.  _ "I am here because his majesty asked me to be. Because, for whatever reason, that stupid sword decided I was worthy. If I am the only one able to wield it, I cannot sit idly by and let the prophecy fail." _

"You put up with it all out of  _ duty? _ Are you a masochist?"

Link startles out a laugh, and it's almost sincere.  _ "I don't know," _ he signs, smiling.  _ "I've never been good at listening to my common sense. But, no, I am not a Champion for the glory,  _ Revali." He pauses, considering the Rito in front of him, his rough edges and pride and temper, the vitriol he hides behind. "Are you?"

Revali stares at him and does not answer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> very little editing went into this because i'm a mess and it's taking everything in me just to post it.
> 
> (Side note that Link's Rito form is based on [this](https://mobile.twitter.com/ebiebieshrimp/status/959469326288936960?s=09))


	2. Two for Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blindsided for a moment, Link struggles to think if he had ever learned the Hylian sign for gladiolus, before he catches the tail of his thoughts and brings them back to more important things. “You think highly of the time we have spent together,” he says softly, in part to keep Revali from hearing them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gladiolus meaning: strength and integrity, accountability. In a bouquet, infatuation.

“Revali seems to have taken a liking to you.”

Link nearly jumps out of his skin, but manages to pass it off as a shrug, as Ylla joins him at the Flight Range campfire, the elder settling his creaky bones on the cushion next to him and nodding to the training course, where Revali is trying a new string on his Great Eagle Bow. “He is not usually so quick to friendships, young Llac.”

_“I think he perhaps pities me,”_ Link signs, and does maybe think that Revali still sees him as inferior, but he doesn’t need Elder Ylla to tell him how few friends Revali has managed to keep. 

Ylla laughs his wheezing laugh, watching Revali land on a boulder only to leap back off of it and notch three arrows at once. “I do not think you are so dense to believe his arrogance is truth.”

And Link has to smile at that. _“Then perhaps it is because we understand each other.”_

“Where he turned to hiding behind his pride, you turned to silence,” Ylla agrees, with a slow, heavy sigh. “I raised him, you know.” Link glances at him, but simply nods; Princess Zelda had mentioned something, when they’d first been introduced. “We think his parents were travelers, killed on the road, but we cannot be sure. It still affects him.”

_“As is expected.”_

“Yes, I suppose so. Then, I don’t need to tell you that, while volatile, his actions rarely do not have intention behind them.”

Link frowns, as Revali summons his gale and rises higher than the Range’s updrafts ever could. _“Am I missing something?”_ he signs, and it only makes Ylla laugh.

“I suppose I am saying that him allowing you so close, these past weeks, cannot be borne of simple pity. And I suppose I am warning you, that I love that boy almost more than I love my village, and he is more than just the Rito Champion.”

Bewildered, Link looks up at him with a sinking, albeit scandalised feeling. _“Are you giving me the shovel talk?”_

Ylla throws his head back to laugh, the sound booming through the canyon so loudly that Revali nearly drops his bow and finally notices Link’s company. “I am pleased to know that Southern tribes have a similar custom! Here, we refer to it as ‘giving a gladiolus’. You’ll have to ask one of the younger warriors for the sign, as I never learned it, but please do not mistake our talk here as a threat. Revali is a grown Rito, with his own agency, and I sense no darkness from you, young Llac. I only wish to have done my part in reminding you that Revali deserves much more than he believes he does, no matter if it is romantic or friendship.”

Blindsided for a moment, Link struggles to think if he had ever learned the Hylian sign for gladiolus, before he catches the tail of his thoughts and brings them back to more important things. “You think highly of the time we have spent together,” he says softly, in part to keep Revali from hearing them.

“I think highly of any who give him the chance. I perhaps wish his fellow Champions would show him the same kindness.” A knowing smile flashed out of the corner of his eye, and Link flushes down to his neck, though he hopes his ruffled feathers aren’t obvious in the low light of the fire. 

No such luck, as Ylla laughs again, and claps him on the shoulder. “I know you have your reasons, young Link, and I will not tell her highness. Truth be told, I would not have noticed, if Revali had not mistakenly said ‘Link’ over our morning meal some days ago.”

For some reason, Link murmurs, “He knew it was me from the start.”

“Yes, well,” he sighs, resigned, “perhaps he pays closer attention to those he wants to pay attention to him.”

_“I do not understand.”_

“Neither do I,” Ylla says, as Revali lands on the end of the deck and looks at the both of them warily. He adds, “Revali is a complicated soul,” as if that explains absolutely anything at all.

“Revali,” Link asks, later, when the Champion is showing him Warbler's Nest — empty, now that the evening meal has been eaten and most have returned to their homes for the night. "Why are you doing this?"

Revali stops mid-explanation about the possible origins of the stone statues and turns to him, raising a brow so it pulls the red painted around his eyes. “Because you asked to see Warbler’s Nest?”

Link shakes his head, finding himself unable to translate his thoughts into words. With a snort, Revali crosses his wings behind his back and looks down his beak at him, but that expression had lost its heat weeks ago.

“Or perhaps you mean to ask why I, the Great Revali, deign to keep you in my presence?”

Link can’t wrinkle his nose in this body, but he certainly tries. _“In so many words.”_

Maybe he hadn’t been expecting a sincere answer, but it takes Revali a moment to close his beak and respond. “You heard Elder Ylla: I am to show you all our tribe has to offer.”

_“Deflection.”_

“Excuse me?” he splutters, stomping over to where Link is sat on the edge of the Sheikah platform in the centre of the clearing, and Link holds back a smile.

“You like having me around.” It’s a funny thought, looking back to just a year ago when Revali had not-so-subtly tried to push him off Rito’s Landing. 

Revali’s expression scrunches, as if Link’s words caused him pain. “You are easier to look at, like this, certainly.”

And Link has to laugh at this, because Revali is ever so transparent. _“I appreciate you keeping me company, these last few weeks.”_

Revali scoffs, looking away with his cheek feathers endearingly ruffled. “Please, if anything, you’ve kept me entertained while her highness occupies others’ attentions.”

“I’m trying to thank you, you cucco.”

“Even a Hylian recluse would know just how offensive it is to call a Rito a cucco. Does her highness know you have such a foul mouth?”

Link grins up at him. _“I only speak so much around you.”_ Instead of playing along, Revali freezes. _“Don’t look at me like that. How many friends do you think I can keep, as her highness’ shadow?”_

“You force Princess Mipha to talk to thin air, then?”

Ahh, and maybe Link had been hoping to avoid this subject for a while longer (forever, if he had his way). “Mipha does not understand our situation.”

“Our _what?”_

_“Yours and mine,”_ he clarifies, suddenly wishing he had better control of his own mind. _“She was born into this.”_

Staring, Revali slowly lowers his wings. “You’ve lost me, Hylian.”

Link shuffles uncomfortably, but Revali does not spare him. _“Well, I had thought we’d reached an understanding. About each other.”_

“Did Ylla say something.”

_“What?”_

“Oh, Lady Medli, he was giving you the gladiolus. Look, Link, whatever he said—”

_“Are we even talking about the same thing?”_ Link wonders to nobody in particular. 

“Whatever he said, I’m not _lonely,_ and I don’t need you to feel _sorry_ for me, and whatever he might have implied—”

“Revali.” Link gets to his feet and grabs Revali’s wrists — or where his wrists would be, if he had them. “I am simply thanking you for giving me the chance, to be your friend. More than an understanding of your people, I have a better understanding of you, and I am thankful that I’ve been allowed that.”

“What,” Revali says weakly, and doesn’t pull away, even when Link carefully releases him. 

_“You and I, we are under pressure different than our companions. The others were born to lead, to champion. I had thought that we understood each other.”_

“I understand very little about you.” 

Link tries not to show his hurt, but he must fail pretty spectacularly from Revali’s guilty expression. _“My mistake.”_

“Wait, Link.” Revali grabs him before he can turn away, his grip surprisingly strong before he lets go. “Hylia, I cannot believe I’m...” He sighs and signs, _“Thank you, Link.”_

“What.”

“For humoring me, while her highness has been busy. I know you did not come by my company by choice, or intent. But you have stayed by both. When I— say that I understand little, I merely mean...”

“What’s this, the Great Revali at a loss for words?” Link says before he can think better of himself.

“I’m _trying,_ you ingrate.” He takes another breath. “I’m not good at this. Instinct tells me you’re not good at it either. But I am thankful also, for your company. I am unused to people staying around long enough for me to enjoy their companionship.”

This is big, Link knows, big for Revali to be admitting this all so readily. But he can’t force his beak closed, nor his brain to do anything useful with the thought.

Revali ploughs on, “If you tell _any_ of the Champions about this, I swear on my woebegotten ancestors that I will rend your—”

“I would really rather not know what you’d do to me.” Revali darts his eyes back up, and Link finally manages a smile. _“Your secret soft side is safe with me.”_

“I am not _sof—_ Get back here!”

Nothing much should have changed, the next morning when Link meets Revali for breakfast in the pavilion, and maybe Link is simply imagining it, but Revali seems to sit in his space with an ease that they did not have before. Smiles more readily, even in front of the other warriors at their table. When he takes Link fishing near the Tabantha Stables, he doesn’t sneer at Link even once.

Link and Zelda have been staying with the Rito for five weeks when Link puts a wing on Revali’s shoulder and leaves it there, as they sit on Vah Medoh and watch the Moonrise. 

He knows it’s changed when Nalle asks him one morning where to find Revali, and Link actually has the answer. When he catches Elder Ylla smiling at him from across the dining pavilion. When he is on the receiving end of far too many knowing winks to ignore. 

Then again, he had known how much Revali kept to himself, how even his Gale had been born of solitude; of course his tribe would notice him spending so much time with their Southern visitor. With Link. For some reason. 

On the morning of their sixth week, Revali wakes him before dawn and takes him to the Flight Range, where no other Rito in their right mind would be out so early. He drills Link on his archery with his usual biting criticism, correcting his posture, his technique, his strength. He ignores Link’s protests that he isn’t as practiced in his Rito body, and instead puts a Falcon Bow in his hands and shows him how to notch two arrows. Teaches him to fly and shoot at the same time. 

He doesn’t mention his Gale, and Link doesn’t ask.

In thanks, Link makes him a salmon stew at the little firepit for lunch, expertly shaving truffles with the knife from his belt, and slicing strawberries to eat while they wait for the stew to thicken. They don’t speak, somehow content in the somewhat exhausted silence of having finished a good day of training; they sit on the same side of the fire. 

Revali stacks his empty bowl on top of Link’s with a pleased huff, lounging back against an extra cushion. “Alright, fine, you best me in cooking, at least.”

“High praise, for the Great Revali.”

“No need to be nasty,” he mocks, but smiles. 

Link hides his own smile in his upper arm, watching dust motes flit about in what little sunshine makes it into the Range. Watches Revali look _content,_ and tries not to despair that their time together is drawing to a close.

“It’s going to be weird,” he says out of nowhere, Revali startling.

“What’s going to be weird?”

_“Our friendship.”_

Revali’s smile slips, tilting his head at him. “Oh?” he asks softly, and Link quickly shakes his head.

_“I mean around the others. Surely they won’t believe we still aren’t at each other’s throats.”_

His frown deepens. “I had not considered it. Sometimes it is... easy to forget who you really are.”

Link looks away to consider this, and finds he doesn’t mind it too much. _“Then maybe it won’t be too difficult for you to return to how we were before.”_

“Must we?”

Something bitter clenching in his chest, Link forces a tiny smile. _“I suppose we don’t spend too much time together, all six of us.”_

“See? It won’t be difficult at all,” Revali blusters and tosses his braids. Link wants to tug on them.

_“I don’t mind them knowing we’re friends.”_

Revali’s breath stutters, and it takes him a long moment to look at Link again. “Nor do I. However, won’t that be suspicious, to her highness? You haven’t told her of your masks, have you.”

Link hasn’t _had_ to tell her about them, before now, and a very large part of him simply doesn’t want her to know; Link sincerely cares for her, he remembers a young princess collecting frogs and flowers and playing with the knights’ children, and he remembers thinking that he could serve a princess like that. It’s been many years since then, with too many twists of fate for things to have worked out exactly like a much younger Link had believed, though he cares for her still. They are not friends. 

_“She will not notice.”_

Sighing like it hurts him, Revali sits up properly and turns on his cushion to face him. “Well, way to make this somber.”

_“It was somber before.”_

“Can you say anything without arguing?”

_“Only when you do.”_

“You’re insufferable.”

_“‘Hasn’t stopped you from pining for me,”_ Link teases, but Revali frowns.

“This.” He repeats the sign for ‘pining’. “What does this mean?”

Link flushes and stares at him; he had not counted on having to explain himself. “Pining,” he forces himself to say, and Revali _laughs._

“You must think very highly of yourself, to think I, the Great Revali, would pine for someone like you _._ ” But it does not sting, because it’s not like Link had not expected him to, and because Revali doesn’t sound sincere at all.

Floundering, Link signs the first thing that comes to mind. _“I prefer spruce.”_

“Was that— Was that a pun?” Revali grabs his hands before he can reply. “No, don’t say anything else, I need a moment.” Hot under the collar, Link just wants him to let go, so he can maybe get control of his emotions again. “The others will never believe me that stoic Link has a sense of humor.”

“I joke with Mipha all the time?”

“Princess Mipha doesn’t count. Does Daruk know you make jokes worse than his grandfather?” Link shudders. Nobody makes jokes worse than Elder Dargug. “Does Lady Urbosa know you call your fellow Champion _names?”_ Revali smiles wider and tugs him closer by his hands, until whatever semblance of understanding Link has over his heart crumbles. “Hard to believe that at one time, I thought you stolid.”

“I think you made that word up.”

Revali sneers with no bite. “Just because I am more educated than the kingdom’s so-called ‘Chosen Hero’, does not mean I have to sit back and be insulted by him.”

Daringly, with courage stolen from much braver men, Link looks him in the eye. “And what are you to do to stop me?”

“If I didn’t know better, _Llac,_ I’d think you were flirting.”

Is he? Does he even know how? Link isn’t sure, but he is sure of very little, these days. Especially the last few weeks. Maybe it’s the masks, he thinks: they are magic, afterall. 

When he looks back to Revali, he does not see the Rito hiding behind hyperbolic pride, nor does he see the Rito Champion. Revali watches him with careful resignation, and Link sees a friend, someone he could grow to care for as deeply as Mipha. But is that what he wants?

“I do not know,” Link murmurs honestly, and Revali lets go of his hands.

A mid-autumn festival marks the final days before Princess Zelda’s departure, and Link has been to plenty of festivals in Castle Town before, but they are nothing like the Rito’s.

Red lanterns hang from every available surface, softly-woven streamers strung above doorways and windows. Rito children run around in red dresses decorated with painted feathers, while the adults wear muted pinks and red jewelry that glitters in the late sunset. Spicy food is served banquet-style in the dining pavilion, to welcome in the Winter, Revali tells him. 

Elder Ylla had offered to find a pink tunic for him, but Link had politely turned him down and accepted a simple scarf instead; he had shown Link how to pin it over his regular gray tunic so he better matches the Hebra Rito, and Ylla even weaves a ruby headpiece into the feathers at his temple. A loan, he had said, and Link tries not to think too hard about it.

The tribe gathers around the great firepit at the centre of the dining pavilion, snacking on chilli peanuts and salmon cakes, and Link doesn’t even think about finding himself next to Revali. They haven’t been avoiding each other, per se, and it isn’t awkward, per se, but they also do not speak, as they sit at a table on the outskirts of the crowd and observe the merrymaking. 

The space between them is heavy with the knowledge that Link is leaving the morning after next.

Across the fire, Link sees Princess Zelda looking around with a frown, and tenses as she gets to her feet. She indeed makes her way over to them, but she barely spares him more than a nod, before turning to Revali.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she smiles, but Link can see the worry creasing her eyes. “Champion Revali, have you by any chance seen Link this evening?”

Revali bristles, but thankfully doesn’t vocalise it. “I have not, princess. Where does he usually go, when you send him away?”

The wince she gives looks halfway to sincere, but ever the diplomat, she does not break from Revali’s glare. “I had thought his room at the inn, but Yvet has not seen him since he left this morning. I had hoped you would...”

Revali glances at Link for guidance, but he hadn’t counted on Princess Zelda ever coming to look for him, had not counted on the innkeeper unknowingly selling him out. 

“Well,” Revali puffs up his chest. “Perhaps he is at the Flight Range? He mentioned something about having to practice, to one day hope of matching me.” Link kicks him under the table.

Zelda frowns, hands clasped in front of her. “He’s spoken to you?”

Link had not told Revali to tone it back with the Princess, and he regrets it now, as he sees the angry light in his eye. “Of course he has. We’ve spoken quite often, these past months.”

She glances quickly to Link, but seems to decide this isn’t a conversation for strange company. “Thank you, Champion Revali, for your insight. If you see him, could you tell him I’d like to speak with him?”

“If you think it’ll do any good.”

“I do not think I have earned such disdain, Revali.” Zelda’s jaw clenches, her knuckles white around her hands. “I had thought us on favourable terms before.”

“We are, princess. Link and I are on better ones.”

She wilts at his words and Link wants to intervene, revealing his secret be damned, but Zelda simply gives a small little bow to the both of them. “Thank you, Revali. For keeping him company during my surveys. If you see him, please send him my way.”

“Of course, your highness.” Revali nods back, but his eyes are narrowed watching her leave.

Once she’s out of earshot, Link kicks him again. “What was that?” he hisses, and Revali waves him off.

“You said yourself that it would be out of place to suddenly be friends, when we must meet with the other Champions again. Now it will not seem so sudden.”

“Well, that’s true, but—”

“Why do you not want your friends to stand up for you?” He pins Link with a glare, daring him to argue. “No matter her status, that she is surprised you’ve been kept company during her visit angers me. Would anger even Lady Urbosa.”

_“I still wish you had not made a fuss.”_

“You’d be the first to say that’s all I’m good at making.”

You’re good at making me confused, too, Link doesn’t say, and accepts the warm horchata Revali passes him.

“A story for another time, you said.”

Link blinks himself back awake, letting his molasses brain remember where he is before stretching languidly. 

The mid-autumn festival customarily ends with the tribe sleeping in the pavilion together, spread out or curled up with their families and friends, their shared warmth enough to battle the lack of any cover over the windows.

Revali had led Link away before then, and he appreciates it: sweating with thirty plus people he doesn’t know beyond cursory friendships makes his skin crawl. And Revali seemed to share the feeling, as they made their way instead to Warbler’s Nest. They had stopped only for Revali to grab a great down quilt from his roost, before sitting against the Sheikah platform and watching the autumn night spin closer to winter.

Link isn’t sure when he’d fallen asleep, but it’s still night, dawn a good few hours off, and he doesn’t have to look to know that Revali had not joined him. He feels a little bad that he’d been allowed rest, while Revali stayed awake, but he’s too sleepy to worry too much, curled as he is into Revali’s side and comfortable beyond belief.

Head tilted to the sky, Revali breathes evenly, somehow infinitely softer when only lit by the half moon. His plumage is so dark it's almost black, and Link quite likes the picture they’d make, night and sunshine sharing the same blanket.

Only when Revali looks down at him does he realise he expected an answer. _“Story?”_ Link yawns, pushing to sit up a little more.

“How the masks came to you. That first night, you said it was a story for another time.”

Ah. It isn’t exactly a _secret,_ but Mipha is the only one left alive to still know the story, and Link hasn’t dared tell anyone since he’d been a child.

But his feathers are pressed so close to Revali’s that he no longer knows whose is whose. _“My mother practiced magic,”_ he starts, because if Revali shied away now, he wouldn’t like the rest of the story. But Revali watches him patiently, seeming content to sit back and listen. Link is ever such a fool for him. _“The way she told it, the day I was born, a strange man came to my parents and left the masks as a gift, saying that I would need them one day.”_

“And your parents just accepted them?”

_“I’m told my mother’s only rival in power was the Queen, and that their majesties were lucky that she had no interest in politics. She knew what the masks would do, and she must have believed the man, to have kept them.”_ Link shrugs, sleepily watching the breeze tousle Revali’s braids. 

Revali is quiet as he works through whatever feelings he has about this, his eyes never leaving Link’s dropped hands. “And they taught you, to control them?”

_“And to live in the bodies they gave me. That is why I spent so much time, in the Zora’s domain as a child.”_

“You did not come to the Rito.”

He shrugs again. _“There was a Rito bard that lived in Castle Town, who used to drink with my father. He taught me to fly and to fight with wings.”_

Leaning further into Link’s side, Revali hmms, sounding just as sleepy as Link feels. “And you never thought to mention any of this, when you were made Champion.”

_“What would have it proven?”_

“‘Would have given you bragging rights, I suppose.”

Link wheezes a laugh, letting Revali tuck himself against him until his head lolls on his shoulder. “We are not all so prideful as you, Revali.”

“Why don’t you ever sign my name?” Link blinks at him, but Revali doesn’t look up. “You showed me yours.”

“Do you have a name, in Hylian Sign?” Link is almost offended that Revali had not mentioned this sooner, because he had been absolutely flabbergasted at trying to translate a Rito name into Sign. He couldn’t very well make one up, because Revali’s most distinguishing feature is his large beak, and Link doesn’t think he would appreciate being named after it. 

“If I did, I have forgotten it.” 

“Then what... would you have me call you?”

“You know Hylian Sign better than I. Invent something.”

“That is far too much power you’ve given me,” Link laughs quietly, but the prospect of crossing a cultural line, or choosing something Revali doesn’t like, terrifies him. 

“I trust you,” Revali mumbles, barely awake now, or else he would never have admitted such a thing. 

“That makes it worse.”

Hmming, Revali shakes himself and sits back up, facing Link a little better now. “Stop being a fledgling and just pick something.”

Little bits of frost are forming on their feathers, but Link does not feel the chill, enraptured by the way the crystals around Revali’s eyes are red from his face paint. 

In the end, he doesn’t have to think too hard. With Revali watching, Link puts his thumb and forefinger to his right cheek, pinching them together in the sign for “bird”, before he brings his fingers underneath his eye to imitate Revali’s markings. 

Revali tilts his head, watching Link repeat it a few times. Then, finally, “Don’t you know how offensive it is to call a Rito simply _bird?”_ But he is smiling, chest feathers puffed and eyes crinkled.

Releasing the breath he’d been holding, Link grins back. _“Do you like it?”_

He hesitates, then leans forward and lets the top of his head thump against Link’s chest, and Link is too surprised to stop him. “You’re impossible,” Revali groans, which doesn’t help Link at all.

“You’re the one that asked me to make one!” he protests, but quietly, not wanting to disrupt whatever peace this is between them, with Revali voluntarily _touching_ him. 

“You _make_ it impossible.”

“Impossible to what?”

“To simply be friends.”

If Link were just a hair more self-loathing, just a bit more unhappy with the world, he’d think Revali was saying he didn’t even like him, that he regretted giving him so much of his time. But the last two months are fresh and precious in his mind, and he knows that this isn’t what Revali means.

And Link may hold the triforce of courage, but he is ever such a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. It would be all too easy for him to push Revali away, physically and emotionally, tell the Rito to get his head back on the matter of defeating an untold Calamity; to maybe even rescind his friendship in an attempt to put distance between them. 

But Link prides himself on being an honest person, and he doesn’t _want_ to push him away. He will not lie to himself.

“I am not truly a Rito, Revali,” he says softly, finally giving in and running his feathers through his braids. 

Revali immediately pulls away, but not so fast as to knock away Link’s hand. “Then remove the mask.”

Link stares at him. Revali glares back, beak far too close to his own for Link to think even remotely straight. When Link doesn't move, Revali slowly shifts his weight and raises his wings; he goes slow enough that Link could stop him, if he wanted, but he doesn't. He lets Revali find the bottom edge of the mask, and somehow knows the magic will allow him to remove it.

He feels Revali's feathers on his Hylian skin for the first time, and almost chokes on his breath. 

Link opens eyes he hadn't realised he'd closed, as Revali lifts the mask from his head completely and holds it between them. His beak is very close now, Link thinks, and surely the blush on his cheeks is even more obvious without feathers. 

And, look, Link is eighteen and healthy, but he hasn't exactly had _time_ to pursue boys, or girls — or Rito, for that matter. The most he knows of romantic interaction is from watching his parents, and the realisation is almost enough for Link to push Revali away and run. 

But Revali is looking at him like he _expects_ Link to push him away, and he decides he will not allow Revali to be right, not this time. 

Link timidly puts a hand around the one holding his Rito mask, and carefully removes the other from Revali’s braids (were his feathers always this soft?), bringing it instead to his cheek. He doesn't let himself think about it —because if he does he'll cucco out— and gently pushes Revali's beak down, leaning in to press their foreheads together. 

Revali gives the gentlest of starts, but then just sort of melts against him, pushing his head more firmly against Link's and making him laugh. He grumbles something about ruining the moment, turning just enough that they somehow slot perfectly together. 

"Is this alright?" Link asks, an unconvinced whisper. 

Making some sort of garbled noise that Link isn't entirely sure is words, Revali pushes against him again, more insistently, and Link lets his shoulders relax. 

Link is the one to pull away, entirely too cold without his feathers or his Snowquil tunic, though it isn't as bad as it could be, when he has a quilt and a Rito-shaped fireplace wrapped around him. Revali doesn't open his eyes immediately, and Link's chest swells until he's fit to burst. 

When Revali finally does look up, he focuses on the ruby earpiece still woven into Link's hair. He frowns, raising a wing to run his feathers over it, his touch impossibly gentle. "Where'd you get this?"

"Elder Ylla leant it to me for the festival.” 

Revali lets out a resigned sigh. "It's mine."

Link stills. So he'd been walking around the village in Revali's jewellery, courtesy of his father figure, and he has no idea if the other Rito had noticed. They hadn't said anything, so maybe they hadn't been surprised to see Llac wearing something of their Champion’s. 

"Do you... Do you want it back?"

Revali pokes the spot between Link's brows. "No, keep it. It's spelled for warmth, it'll do more for you than me."

"You sure you just don't want me to see you in your jewellery?"

"We're a little early in this relationship for that kind of talk, don't you think?"

"You're talking a big game for someone who had to have their dad confess for them."

Revali splutters, but pushes a hand through Link’s messy hair. "You're insufferable."

_"You seem pretty content to keep suffering me."_

With a snort, Revali leans back in to press his forehead to Link's. "Can you not ruin this, please."

"You'd be the first to say that's all I'm good at," Link tells him quietly, smiling against his feathers and bemused that he's allowed to have this. Whatever this is. 

Revali grunts in disagreement. "No, you're good at being insufferable, too."

"Now who's ruining it."

"I don't need your sass, Hylian."

Link presses a kiss to the very top of Revali's beak, even though he knows it’s a Hylian action, and that he might not understand. Revali melts even more against him, and Link decides he should have known better. 

Zelda finds him as he’s packing the next evening, standing in the doorway to his room at the inn with her hands clasped behind her back. She tries for a smile, but the fact she won’t enter his room properly speaks volumes. 

Link had been expecting her, after her conversation with Revali, and gives her a polite nod, because he doesn’t know what to expect her to say.

Doesn’t expect her to flinch and look to her feet. “Elder Ylla said you speak with him in Sign. Will you not do so with me?”

Link’s throat closes, as he sucks in a breath that gets stuck somewhere in his chest. Zelda scuffs her foot against the floor and continues, 

“I know that I... have not been kind to you. And I have not acted befitting my station to you. And I know that you do not owe me any forgiveness, but I had hoped you might... let me try again.”

Is this what he wanted? For his biting commander to let go of her pride and apologise? To attempt to reconcile? Maybe Link has just gotten too used to her reticence around him, maybe it’s been so long that she had only looked at him to glare, that he isn’t sure what he’d do, if they became friends. 

“Won’t you say anything?” she pleads, in a voice that sounds all wrong from her mouth; Link hates that he’s the one to have made her sound so desperate. 

But his voice is not always his to control, and he can’t force anything out, just then, staring at an almost-teary Princess and wishing he were anywhere else. He cannot even make his hands obey him.

Princess Zelda must see some of his turmoil, and instead of snapping at him, she takes a deep breath and settles herself. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have sprung this on you so suddenly, that wasn’t fair of me. I’m… sure you’ve had your reasons for your silence, and I. I understand that things between us will not change immediately. Please, be patient with me, so I can learn more about you, and maybe one day call you friend.”

“Zelda,” Link says softly, though he can’t say which of them is more surprised. _“You do not need to apologise.”_

She takes longer to translate his signs than the Rito, than his fellow knights, though he supposes it makes sense that a princess wouldn’t have nearly as much practice using it with the common folk; Sign is for traders and soldiers, travellers not princesses. 

But she still makes sense of it, and quickly shakes her head. “No, Link, I do. I… spoke with Revali, last night, and he mentioned a few things that…”

It is not fitting, for Link to see his headstrong princess so hesitant, and he can barely contain himself from telling her so. Instead, he puts down the quiver he had been refilling and steps across the room to take her hands into his own. He encourages her to go on with a little nod, and Zelda smiles blearily at him. 

“Even now, you are so kind, I almost can’t believe it.” She squeezes his fingers. “When I didn’t see you at the celebration, it occurred to me that I have seen even less of you these past two months than all our other travels combined. Please, tell me you weren’t holed up in here the whole time. Please, Link.”

He offers a small smile. “I was not.”

“When I spoke with Champion Revali,” she takes another deep breath, “he said you’d spent some time with him. And I thought, that if you could wear down someone like him into even mild friendship, why was it that you couldn’t do that with me.” Tone gaining confidence, she pushes on, “I realised the problem lay with me. Urbosa has been trying to talk sense into me for months, but I— I didn’t realise how bad it was.”

“It’s alright,” he murmurs.

“I don’t think it is, Link. I suppose you do not have to accept my apologies, but please let me finish them.” She takes her hands from his and bows to him, a little too deep for a princess to a knight, but it makes it all the more real to Link that Zelda is _serious._ “Please allow me to try and mend what I’ve broken between us.”

Link waits for her to raise her head before signing, _“Bent, not broken.”_

Her answering smile is pleased and soft, far more fitting than her almost-tears. “You owe me so little kindness, Link, I am not sure I’m deserving.”

He shrugs once and motions for her to wipe her cheeks; she follows his lead immediately, nodding to herself determinedly. 

“I am relieved you have not been alone while I’ve been off being foolish. Though, I don’t think any of us were expecting you to find that company with Revali.” She laughs, as if expecting Link to join her, but something must cross his expression because she halts almost immediately. “What’s that smile for?”

Smile?

Bewildered, Link pats his cheeks and orders his racing heart to calm; he had become known for his stoicism for a reason, and he will not let his silly crush(?) on Revali interfere with his reputation. That he has not taken off the ruby hairpiece is irrelevant.

“I’m quite sure Urbosa won’t believe me, when I tell her you’ve become friends,” Zelda laughs again. “Or that you accepted a gift from him.” Link narrows his eyes, but Zelda just pats his arm. “Please, I can think of no one else that would have given you a warmth charm.”

He would very much like to tell her that he’d made friends with just about every Rito in the village, and any one of them would have been happy to give him such a charm, but then he would have to explain why they _hadn’t,_ and Link realises what an odd place he is in, when Llac is the one that had made made those friendships.

Revali, Ylla and Edle are the only Rito that see them off, since the warriors have just started morning drills and the chicks aren’t yet awake, but Link appreciates how little fanfare they’re given: the Gerudo had been far less reserved at their departure.

While Zelda deals with the politics of thanking the Elders, Revali joins Link at Epona’s side, wings behind his back as if nothing had changed between them. His private smile when Link looks up at him tells a different story entirely. 

“You’re to return to the Castle, now?” he asks, quiet enough not to disturb Zelda and Edle saying their goodbyes. Link nods, tilting his head at the scene and wondering if Zelda is easily attached to wise warrior-types like Urbosa and Edle. 

_“His majesty wants us to stop at the spring of courage first.”_

Revali frowns. “Hasn’t he forced that upon her enough?”

“She has not tried praying at this one yet,” Link sighs, surreptitiously leaning into Revali’s side; Revali turns just enough to accomodate him. _“I think she’s stalling.”_ He nods to her.

“I suppose his majesty is going to expect more from her training on her sealing magic, now that she’s spent so long with the Divine Beasts,” Revali agrees. Then, after a pause, “We did not explicitly discuss where we fall.”

This time, Link doesn’t have to think about what he wants. _“Together, hopefully.”_

Every feather on Revali’s face stands up, skin around his eyes flushing to the colour of his face paint, and he immediately grabs Link’s head as if to shake him. “You cannot simply throw words like that around!” His voice cracks midway, making Link laugh enough that it feels like his smile will split his face. 

“Revali, I know you dislike Link being champion, but I do have to ask you to unhand him,” Zelda interrupts, poorly trying to hide her grin behind a hand as she makes her way over to them.

With a garbled noise of embarrassment, Revali does release him and step away, but not before Link manages to tug on one of his braids. Ylla watches them in rapt amusement, and though Link knows Revali wouldn’t have said anything to him yet, he also knows that Ylla sees the hairpiece woven into a plait at Link’s temple, and it doesn’t take much to put two and two together. 

Link grins at him openly, and signs a hearty _“Thank you,”_ which only makes the Elder laugh harder. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what the frick kind of confession scene was that.


	3. Three For—

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’ve lifted me before,” he sniffles after a long pause, refusing to raise his head as Revali’s hands still. “On your gale.”
> 
> Letting out a slow, measured breath, Revali shifts. “You said you didn’t remember.”
> 
> “Just the feeling. Colours. I had... Was I wearing yellow?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this! I was struggling to figure out what to include here and what to save for the sequel. Because there's a sequel now. Because I enjoy watching myself suffer.

_“Link!” Zelda shouts, as he side-steps in front of her and blocks a blow from a guardian spear. Every muscle in him screams in protest, just begging for_ rest, _but he pushes all that noise to the background, the way he’s pushed all thought of the other Champions to somewhere so deep in his mind that he can no longer remember where._

_Sweat and blood drips into his eyes, hair coming loose of his braids and hairtie, until his ruby headpiece is hanging on by a single lock. He catches it twinkling in his periphery, as if reminding him that he can’t die here — not when there’s a chance the Champions are still alive._

_The guardian stalker barreling towards him, red sight locked on his throat, has a different fate in mind._

A drowning Link gasps back to life in a shrine with a name he can't pronounce, his broken basket memory just intact enough for him to remember that it is not only his breath that he had lost.

* * *

Vah Ruta wakes no memories for him, the way Vah Rudania had not, the way Vah Naboris had not. The way the feather necklace he found in a chest in the Shrine of Resurrection had not. 

Princess Mipha is better at hiding her grief than Daruk had been, but Link can still see it in her eyes, and he thinks he must have known her very well, at some point.

“And. . . And the others?” she asks. Link supposes he will grieve for her later, when he remembers more about this old friend that stands before the main control unit of Vah Ruta, her hands clasped tightly at her waist and her eyes fixed on the ground. 

Of all things, Link still remembers Sign, but he doesn't use it. "Lady Urbosa and Lord Daruk are freed," he says softly instead. They had not asked about the Champions, only urged him to free the others quickly. 

Mipha swallows, taking a shaky little breath into lungs that don't need it anymore. Was this pain in his chest grief? 

"But they all fell, with Ganon."

Link nods and looks away. This, too, had been his fault, he's told: if he had not fallen, if he had sealed Ganon away the first time, Mipha would not be a ghost before him, and her brother would not be waiting outside as he had done for the past one hundred years. 

Mipha looks up suddenly, her crown jangling softly with the movement. "You have not freed Revali?"

Another name, another friend he cannot remember. Link simply shakes his head. Instead of being disappointed, like everyone else expecting him to have a memory he does not, Mipha claps a hand over her mouth and stares at him. 

"Revali. . . Revali is the last Champion?" Link tries, his voice much steadier than it had been when he first awoke in the Shrine. 

"Link, could it be that you. . . Your headpiece is gone."

Link raises a hand immediately for his right temple, his fingers expecting to find a braid, but there isn't one, and he hasn't had one since he woke. Mipha follows the action with an ancient sadness, with emotions far more complex than Link is any longer privy to. 

"Your highness," Link starts, and Mipha looks like she's about to cry. "I have. . . very little memory, before the Calamity. Pieces."

"Princess Zelda always thought that there would be a price, to use the Shrine of Resurrection. I wish. . . it had not been this." Mipha steps closer to him and puts a hand on his cheek, Link jerking under her palm with the shock that she can even _do_ so. "Link, please make haste to the Rito village, to Vah Medoh. Perhaps more memories will be jogged, along the way, but please, free the final Champion."

Bewildered and inexplicably sad, Link leans into her palm. "I must release all of you, and your Divine Beasts, to defeat the Calamity."

Mipha closes her eyes in a wince. "The Rito Champion, he is. . . not patient. Especially not with you. I almost can't believe the Goddesses would take so much from their chosen hero, but that you did not seek Vah Medoh first proves you have lost more than you should have ever had to bear."

Staring at her, Link does feel. . . something. An itching in his feet, a pull towards something far away. And he feels as if he had been told something similar before — just as then, he doesn't think he is undeserving of punishment, when he has failed his divine task so spectacularly.

She watches him closely as if she knows exactly what he is thinking, and her restrained mask crumbles at the edges. "Oh, Link," she whispers. "You silly, silly, Hylian."

"Princess—"

"You have not called me princess since we were children, Link, please do not start now."

Instead of saying her name aloud, Link automatically moves three fingers to his mouth, for the trident she no longer bears, and then crooks his fingers to imitate the smile she only gives when she is laughing so hard that she forgets to hide her teeth. Link has no memory of ever seeing this smile, but he must have, if he remembers that he is the one to have made this Sign for her. 

Mipha takes her hand from his cheek to put them both over her mouth, and, ah, Link remembers this helpless feeling whenever she used to cry when they were young. 

But Mipha is smiling behind her fins, and Link finally feels like he's done something right. 

He finds the headpiece in a chest in a Bokoblin camp a mile from the Rito Stables. When he holds it in his palm, that inexplicable sadness hits him with such a force that he nearly misses a surviving Bokoblin trying to take his head off. 

It isn't until Link is trying to whistle for his horse Malon that he realises he is crying. 

He doesn't wear it until the cold is unbearable and he has no other choice; when he does, something slides into place in his chest, as if someone had finally pulled the bolt on a rusty door. 

Walking into Rito village feels like coming home, but Link does not recognise a single building. After speaking with a few of the residents, he finds out that almost everything had been rebuilt after the Calamity, and whatever time he spent here before losing his memory doesn't matter anymore. 

Elder Kaneli doesn't know Link, though must have been a chick when he was here last: it had only been a century after all. He calls Link "descendant", as if Hyrule's Champion would have ever had time to _have children._ The fact that most of the survivors of the Calamity think that Link had simply abandoned them twists his stomach into knots. 

He doesn't speak a word aloud to Elder Kaneli (and he doesn't know why he knows he will understand Hylian Sign, just as he doesn't know why he remembers how to get to the Flight Range without Saki's instructions. Why he almost forgets to release his paraglider, as if he could have made it to the Range without it.)

Revali's Landing looses no memories as he had hoped, but the moment his boots touch the deck of the Range, Link is almost knocked from his feet with the force of them, a cry stuck somewhere in his throat. 

_The Range is silent, barely lit by a sun that won't rise properly for several more hours, but Link is at home in the flickering of the cooking fire. He's swaddled in Revali's quilt against the chill, having left his Snowquill tunic at the inn, and he actually feels quite silly, but he doesn't interrupt Revali._

_Sat facing him on the closest cushion, the Rito Champion speedily weaves down-yarn with a fine leather cord, plaiting it with a skill Link can only hope of one day sharing. Revali hadn't cared that Link already had a cord wrapped around his wrist that would have sufficed; he had waved off Link's protests to make his own as soon as they'd settled at the fire._

_Link watches his fingers move deftly through the strings with a rapt fascination, that Revali has so much control over appendages that don't seem fit for such dextrous work. He had at first thought it was a traditional braid, but leaning closer (Revali shifting to give Link a better view) Link finds it somehow uses five strands and is impossibly thin for how bulky it should have gotten with the leather._

_Revali works in silence until he has just enough cord to hang comfortably from Link's neck, then he knots the ends. He reaches under his wing and picks through the feathers until he has three that he can part with. He leans back closer to Link, and Link automatically moves to meet him, both their heads bowed over Revali's wings as he works._

_"One for luck," Revali tells him softly, starting a new leather cord around the first feather's calamus. "Two for trust." He adds the second, combining the feathers and cord into a sort of tassel, somehow even more intricate than the necklace. "Three for—"_

Link gasps, a Rito wing catching him before his knees hit the ground. 

"Descendant!" a rough voice barks, full of concern he is undeserving of. Looking up, Link finds a Rito standing over him; he can only be Teba, with Saki's feathers braided behind his jaw, but Link doesn't know why he knows what that means. Teba stares at him in worry, his natural colouring making him seem all the more intense, and it takes Link almost a full minute to realise how tightly he clings to his wing.

He jerks back, signing an apology quickly. _“I’m sorry, sometimes I get like that, I don’t—”_

“Calm yourself,” Teba interjects immediately. “You have harmed no one. But are you alright? You look barely able to keep your feet.”

Possessed by a frantic energy, Link yanks the feather necklace out from where it hides in his Snowquill tunic and holds it up to Teba. Perplexed, Teba obligingly looks at it, but no recognition passes his expression.

“Descendant, I don’t know what—”

_“What do they mean? Why do I have them?”_

Teba flounders, clearly having been expecting Link to try and make him return to the village, and not. . . whatever this is. “I don’t recognise the colour, if that’s what you’re. . . If you were not given them, where did you get them?”

And Link doesn’t really have an answer for that, without having to explain about the Shrine of Resurrection, explain that he isn’t really the Hero’s descendant. And Link _knows_ who the feathers belonged to, knows just who gave them to him, but _why?_ He must have known what they meant, to have accepted them from Revali so long ago, but that gap in his brain offers no explanation that doesn’t churn his guts uncomfortably.

Teba keeps a wing on his shoulder as they discuss the divine beast shooting villagers out of the sky, and Link mostly listens, left reeling enough that he doesn’t hesitate to join Teba in an assault on Vah Medoh, despite not having a single bomb arrow on him. 

It’s more important to get there quickly, he tells himself as Teba swings him onto his back. It’s more important to find Revali and demand to know just what he had been playing at, giving Link a Rito marriage proposal.

Just like on the other Divine Beasts, Revali’s voice floods his mind as soon as he’s activated the first terminal, but the other Champion’s voices had not made his chest ache.

“So you finally decided to show up, hm?” Revali snarks, tone acidic. “Only took you a hundred years.”

And Link knows he can’t respond, that he’d tried with Mipha and she had not heard him, but he can’t help the whispered, “I’m sorry,” that slips past his lips. He throws himself into Vah Medoh’s puzzles without a single care for his wellbeing; the thought that at the end of this, he’ll see Revali properly, is more than enough to keep him fighting when he stumbles through raw malice and his whole world burns, or when a guardian spear whacks him across the ribs so hard he hears them crack.

Revali’s voice fills the gaps in his head, criticising his form, his technique, how could he have let that blow land? Aren’t you better than that? When Link has to abandon his knight’s broadsword before it snaps, Revali cuts through the noise to bite, “Where’s your darkness-sealing sword now, Hero? Have you abandoned that too?”

“Shut up!” Link yells, the crack in his voice echoing around Medoh’s belly to fill the sudden silence. Unconvinced that Revali can even hear him, Link claps his hands over his ears as if it can keep the sound from hurting him, until it’s just his own breathing in his ears.

“. . . You’re bleeding, Hero,” Revali says, softer this time, and Link thinks, of course he is, he had barely defeated the guardian scout in the antechamber. 

He doesn’t tell Revali this, of course, dropping his hands and gritting his teeth. He has too many questions to lose his grip now. Revali is still trapped, and after Urbosa’s description of just what kind of prison the corrupted Divine Beasts are, Link will put up with whatever verbal abuse this final Champion can throw at him: Link is too strong to crumble under his vitriol.

When Link finally reaches the last terminal before the main control unit, he wants nothing more than to collapse. His hand shakes as he taps the terminal with his Sheikah slate, blood sliding down his fingers from the cut on his arm. The colour is pretty, he decides, when it soaks into the leather of his gauntlet and stains it dark.

_"Princess, we should get you to safety. Champions, return to your Beasts,” Urbosa orders, as the Calamity burns in the castle, in Link’s home. “We will need all the help we can get.”_

_With determined nods, Mipha and Daruk immediately turn away towards their domains, but Revali stands rooted to the spot; Link only realises he isn't looking at the castle when he whispers,_

_“Link.”_

_Zelda and Urbosa watching be damned, Link steps to his side and grips Revali’s wrist; he startles at the touch, and Link tightens his grip. “Don’t cucco out on us now,” he returns just as soft, quiet enough that he can pretend Zelda cannot hear them._

_Revali doesn’t look mollified, and if Link didn’t know better, he might think Revali is_ worried. _He reaches out for Link’s barely-visible necklace, as if that could translate his feelings better than words, but Link thinks he still understands._

 _He tugs on the new braid at Revali’s right temple, a mix of fine blue feathers and blond hair, until Revali leans down. Link presses up onto his toes to knock their foreheads together once, before he releases his braid and pushes him away._ “I’ll see you when this is over,” _Link signs, and Revali says nothing, as he summons his gale and launches into the sky. Link pretends he doesn’t see Zelda turn to hide her devastated expression._

With no one to catch him, Link grips the terminal as his legs give out underneath him, kneecaps cracking against the floor, but Link can barely feel it, when his breaths come in rapid gasps that grate like sand through his lungs. 

Link is honest, so honest he cannot even lie to himself, but it isn’t fair, he thinks, to thrust this sort of information on him when he can’t _do_ anything about it. It had been one thing, to lose his friends and princess and mentors and memories all at once, but wholly another to have promised someone something, and failed them so exceptionally that he doesn’t even remember them. 

It is not blood that drips off his nose, but Link ignores it all the same. 

“Get up, Hero,” Revali whispers, a warm gentle nudge at the back of his mind. Link shakes his head. “Get up.” 

He inhales shakily, sniffling once, before he pushes himself up using the terminal. Revali makes some sort of chirp, soft and almost pained, and Link nods to himself. Just the scourge left, then he could rest. 

Objectively, Link knows Thunderblight Ganon was the nastiest of the bunch, had to have been, to be able to take down Urbosa. And Windblight had to be just as tricky to best Revali, but maybe Link is simply too exhausted to put up as vicious a fight as he had on Vah Naboris, when even Thunderblight had not tossed him around like a doll, like the Goddesses’ chosen hero is nothing more than an untried squire. 

Every centimetre of him aches, wind-chafed or bruised, and he has not felt so beaten since he had first awoken, but the only thing he can think is that he should have gotten more bomb arrows from Teba.

“Look out, you fool!” Revali roars in his head, Link ducking just in time to dodge a blast from Windblight’s cannon. He sprints for an air vent and releases his paraglider, wind catching under its sail and almost ripping his shoulders from their sockets. Ignoring the burn in his muscles, Link swings his bow from his back and notches a bomb arrow, zeroing in on Windblight’s eye.

He looses the arrow but doesn’t wait to see it hit, pulling out his glider. Of course he mistimes it and barely manages not to crash, stumbling on impact. Maybe he _should_ be treated as an untried squire, he thinks: even they know a stumble is all it takes.

Windblight’s cannon catches him in the chest, more a battering ram than a fist, lifting him clean off his feet and sending him flying away from the control unit. With Medoh’s scream in his ears, Link bounces down her stone wing a full four times before knocking into the remains of a pillar and stopping abruptly.

“Get up, hero, get up!” Was that Revali, or Medoh?

Link doesn’t know, lying on his side and wheezing, feeling like he’s breathing through wire wool. Something wet drips from his nose, his eyes focussing just enough to see the colour as it stains the stone beneath him. The knowledge that Windblight Ganon is a mere few metres away is background, somehow not important enough to convince Link that he needs to get up, not important enough for him to keep his eyes from closing.

Windblight wails inhumanly, a sound that haunts Link whenever he actually manages to sleep. Sleep sounded nice, right about then. 

_“You did not have that, when last we met.”_

_Link looks up from where he’s toying at his meal, too nervous to eat. Mipha sits across the table from him, her own plate clean but her cup of wine untouched. She tilts her head at him with a knowing smile, and Link belatedly feels guilty: Mipha had been his best friend since they were children, and he’d known for a while the sort of feelings she had developed for him._

_She should have been the first one he’d told._

_He self-consciously finds the headpiece holding his braid in place; it had miraculously stayed put the entire journey to the Spring of Courage, despite two run-ins with the Yiga Clan and needing to escape a Lynel at Lake Cora. Zelda hasn’t mentioned it since leaving the Rito Village, but he should have known Mipha would notice immediately._

_She is the first to have arrived at the Highland Stables, where the Champions are set to meet and support Zelda at her final prayer to the Goddesses. Link suspects it has something to do with King Doraphan’s family visiting the palace, that Mipha got here so quickly: she had never gotten along with her cousins, and probably leapt at the chance to get away._

_“I do not refer to your headpiece,” Mipha adds, that smile only making Link feel worse: Revali’s feathers are clearly visible around his neck._

“I’m sorry,” _he signs, but she reaches across the table and gently pulls his hand away from his chest._

_“You have nothing to apologise for, Link. Words cannot tell you how happy I am that you are happy, even with all that is happening.” Mipha nods to Zelda sat across the inn by the fire, a book forgotten in her lap. “Princess Zelda needs you at your best, and I have not seen you so sure of yourself in many years.” She releases his hand. “Perhaps it had been foolish of me, to think you would wait for me.”_

_Link winces and sets down his fork._ “It was not foolish.”

_“Wasn’t it?” she asks softly._

_He shakes his head determinedly, but isn’t quite sure what she wants him to say. “If. . . If this was a year ago. . .”_

_Mipha laughs as he trails off. “I made you armour, you know.” She doesn’t wait for him to register just what that means, before she quickly adds, “I do not mean to guilt you, Link. I just thought that if you and Revali have intentions of. . . Well, whatever your intentions may be, I wanted to make sure there were no secrets between us. You’re my best friend, and you will remain so.”_

_True that Link had known what kind of affections she’d held for him —once upon a time he might have held them too— the knowledge had not prepared him for this conversation. With his meal looking even less appetising than before, he frowns at his friend and feels his chest ache._

_“Do not worry about me, Link,” she whispers, smiling all the while. “I mean it when I say that your happiness is mine.”_

“I did not mean for anything to come between us.” _If he means Revali, or the inevitability of his fight with Ganon, even he isn’t sure._

_“And nothing has. I will be the first to congratulate you, should anything come of this courtship.” She releases a breath, finally picking up her wine cup and taking a tiny sip. “Please do not. . . hate me, if part of me hopes nothing does.”_

_“I don’t know if I could,” he murmurs, managing a smile in return._

_The canvas of the tent flaps loudly, a great wind coming from the Northwest and heralding a Rito's arrival, and Mipha laughs at the way Link’s expression brightens. “You are ever so obvious, Link,” she teases, pushing his plate closer to him. “Eat before you are occupied with other things.”_

_He doesn’t ask what she means._

“You stupid elf!” Revali barks, tearing into Link’s semi-conscious mind. “Use your mask!”

“My what?” he mumbles, eyelids feeling heavier than anything. 

“You will not survive another attack like that. Get up.”

Link’s body does not obey him, and part of him wonders where the line is, how broken he has to be to warrant Mipha’s Grace. Clearly he isn’t there yet, from the way three of his ribs grind against themselves and how he feels tacky blood drying on his upper lip; Mipha would have fixed all that up, if she had already healed him.

“Get. Up.”

With no energy to tell the Rito Champion that he _can’t,_ Link sinks further into himself and hopes Vah Medoh won’t mind him continuing his impromptu nap. A cold but soft something grips the side of his neck, preventing him from falling asleep, and an ancient part of him would know Revali’s feathers anywhere.

“Get up,” Revali repeats, softer, more desperate, his grip on Link tightening. “Windblight Ganon will not wait for you to recover.”

When his lips won’t obey him either, Revali mumbles a curse under his breath and gives him a little shake. "Where do you keep your mask? Your Rito mask."

He'd found a Lizalfos mask, once, but had left it somewhere near Hateno village when all it had gotten him were new scars; in all the travelling he's done, Link doesn't think he's heard anybody mention a Rito mask. 

"What about potions? Link, open your eyes."

Link obeys, blinking blearily up at the ghost that crouches over him, war paint pulled into a worried grimace. Revali lets out a little breath and brushes his wing over Link's messy hair, right over his headpiece. "'Vali?" Link mumbles, lips sticking together for a moment. Had he defeated Windblight, then?

"Yes, you foolish Hylian. Where are your potions?" 

"'Dunno," he answers honestly. Truthfully, he can't remember the last time he had made potions or elixirs, but it had likely been a while. Before Rito Village, surely. 

Revali huffs a sigh and checks over his shoulder. "Utterly asinine," he tells Link like he's talking to a child. "But luckily for your stupidity, Windblight Ganon seems to want to stay by the control unit. Do you have your mask with you, at least?"

Wishing Revali would stop talking so he could sleep, Link grunts, only keeping his eyes open when Revali shakes him again. "'Never had a Rito mask."

"How hard did you hit your head?" He pushes aside Link’s hair as if to check for himself, but Link knows he won’t find anything. Or maybe he will: Link certainly _feels_ concussed. 

The world spins as Link watches the wind whip through Revali’s feathers, the single braid at his temple. He had not given Revali a bead, back then; distantly, he wonders if he still has time to.

“Link?” Revali brushes over his cheek, but it feels all wrong, like Link isn’t _supposed_ to feel it. 

He shakily raises his hands. _“I don’t know what mask you speak of. Did I have it before?”_

Staring at him, it takes Revali a moment to understand what he’s trying to say, before he pulls back sharply; though not warm, Link misses his hands on him anyways. “Befor— What do you mean _before?”_

_“Before the Calamity.”_

Revali’s throat bobs once, and Link can see the tremor in his wings. “You do not...?”

_“Remember? No.”_ Too exhausted to maintain the conversation, Link’s arms drop without his permission, his consciousness trying to follow suit.

“No, you don’t get to— Link, what’s my name?”

He almost chokes on his breath, because he knows Revali doesn’t mean his given one. “I don’t know.”

The silence that follows is almost as crippling as Zelda’s used to be, and part of Link knows it wasn’t exactly fair of him to dump all of this on Revali, mid-battle, but unless something happened to kickstart Mipha’s healing, he isn’t sure he’ll have _time_ later. Above him, Revali doesn’t make a sound, not needing air anymore, and Link does find the time to envy him, with his own broken breathing so loud in his ears. 

“And I suppose the Goddesses think this is equal exchange,” Revali bites, with a malice Link is thankful he’s never been on the other side of. “Were I not bound to this stupid machine, I would hunt them down myself.”

Mipha had implied so much but explained so little, and Link doesn't trust his memory enough to really believe that Revali would tie himself to him, but perhaps there's too much evidence to ignore. Whatever this is between them, now as then, Link wants to hold onto it so hard that it dents his skin. 

He forces his eyes back open to fumble at the collar of his tunic, managing to pull out his necklace. What he's trying to prove, he isn't quite sure, he just knows he needs Revali to know he still has it.

Instead of relieved, or happy, or _anything,_ Revali looks away. "Where did you get that."

"You made it for me."

"You don't remember the name you gave me, but you remember that? No, don't answer, we don't have time for this right now. Can you summon Mipha to heal you?" Revali looks behind him, but seems to decide they have more time when he doesn't make Link get to his feet. 

“Not unless I die,” Link mumbles.

“Unless you _what?”_

Link has never been hungover, but he imagines it feels something like this; it would be nice if Revali stopped shouting. “It’s fine, s’happened before.”

“It’s _what?”_

“Stop shouting.”

“Lady Medli, we have much to discuss. _After_ you’ve avenged me.” Link feels Revali start poking around his pockets, before the weight of his Sheikah slate leaves with Revali’s hands. “You pulled another sword out of this; Link, do you have potions in it?”

“Your feathers are really blue.”

Swearing again in a language Link doesn’t know, Revali grabs his hand and uses Link’s fingers to activate the slate and search through it; Link thinks it’s a bit silly, he could have just asked him to use it, but he’s too tired to tell him to stop.

“Asinine,” Revali mutters grumpily, letting Link go and uncorking something. The feeling of a cold body propping him up is absolutely bizarre, and bizarrely comfortable, even as Link nearly chokes on whatever Revali tips down his throat. 

It burns on the way down —Revali must have grabbed one of the chilly potions— but Link had apparently had the foresight of boosting it with a hearty truffle or two, from the way he can feel it oozing through him and mending as it goes. It isn't so bad as when he'd had to repair a collapsed lung in the Zora's domain, though it still _hurts,_ and he grunts as his ribs snap back into place. 

He blinks back to himself only when the potion fixes his nose enough for him to breathe properly. Revali glares down at him, but with his mind finally clearing, excitement takes up any space guilt had occupied before. Link smiles back, even as he feels the blood on his teeth; Revali is less than amused, sighing as if Link had just spilled something on his carpet. 

"Only you would be this stupid after almost dying, you ingrate."

"Good to see you too, 'Vali."

"Your humour is still intact, it seems; next you'll tell me your favourite tree, or call me a bird, or—"

"Spruce." 

Link blinks, surprised at himself, and Revali blinks back. 

Then he drops Link back onto the ground with a thump. "You'll forget my _name,_ but not your stupid _pun—_ Stop smiling, this isn't funny."

Even flat on his back, Link grins and finds he doesn't care that he's mid-battle with malice incarnate, or that his fiancé (fiancée?) is technically dead, because he can still reach up and hold his stupid beak and it's almost like he's back in Rito Village before their world crumbled around them. 

Revali's eyes flutter closed. He leans into Link's hands and lets out a huff as Link runs his palm down the ridge of his beak, and it almost feels real. 

But somewhere behind Revali, Windblight Ganon screams, making its furor at being ignored known. 

Link rolls to his feet quickly, pulling out a Yiga blade and automatically shoving Revali behind him. Now properly upright, he realises the potion isn’t quite done fixing him up yet, but Windblight seems to finally find them, its one blue eye spinning wildly as it screams again. 

Revali shouts something after him, but Link doesn’t wait to figure out what, pushing off his heels and sprinting for the control unit. Windblight swings its cannon around, something in the movement wild and uncalculated; had Link gotten its health low enough for it to panic? Perhaps he hadn't been making an utter fool of himself, then. 

Windblight stupidly dives at him in its alarm, leaving an opening just wide enough for Link's blade. He slices upwards and rips it back out, ducking under a reckless blow and skipping backwards; Windblight does the same, putting distance between them and seemingly learning from its mistake. It takes to the air, summoning its four drones as if Link had not already knocked them from the sky twice before. 

Link mentally counts his quiver, and he doesn't have enough bomb arrows for all five of them, but if he manages to group the drones together—

A murmur at the back of his mind, _“Put out your wings.”_

A ferocious gust of wind catches underneath him, nothing at all like the air vents dotting Vah Medoh’s back, that catapults him higher than a Hylian has any right to go. A warmth surrounds him, a whisper of something the Goddesses won’t let him remember, but he knows all the same; a wing that isn’t there brushes over his braid. 

He reaches for the quiver at his waist and notches three bomb arrows at once. 

Link manages to tap his slate to the control unit before his jelly legs give out underneath him, whatever strength the potion had given him leaving like the malice leaving Medoh. He feels Revali before he hears him, a cold wing wrapping around his shoulders and easing him to the ground, a cold beak pressing to the top of his head.

“You utter fool,” Revali grumbles, as Link lets out a gasp against his neck. “Were you really going to make me watch you die again?”

“Again?” he pants, not sure where his breath had gone.

Revali is quiet for a moment, feathers threading into the loose hair at the base of Link’s neck. Then, “We all felt it, when you fell. Even newly dead ourselves, we felt it.”

Link heaves. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—”

“Quiet, you have nothing to apologise for.” The wing leaves his shoulders to press against his chest instead. “You are alive now.”

Even choking on a sob, Link refuses to cry again. “But you aren’t.”

“I’m alive enough to exact revenge on Ganon, and that has to be enough.”

Link shakes his head against him and feels the last six months of grief finally catch up with him, leaving him paralysed.

“Why must you be so argumentative,” Revali asks in a whisper, playful sarcasm falling flat. With hands so much more gentle than Link can remember them being when they were alive, Revali tugs Link’s braid loose and gently unpins his headpiece. He pulls away just enough to rebraid it, but thankfully doesn’t make Link move.

“You’ve lifted me before,” he sniffles after a long pause, refusing to raise his head as Revali’s hands still. “On your gale.”

Letting out a slow, measured breath, Revali shifts. “You said you didn’t remember.”

“Just the feeling. Colours. I had... Was I wearing yellow?” He frowns and wipes his nose on his sleeve. Yellow clothing didn’t fit right with the blurry images in his head, and Link knows that even before the Calamity, he seldom if ever wore the colour.

“No.” Revali resumes plaiting his hair, somehow even gentler than before. “And I’m sure Impa has some cock and bull reason I shouldn’t tell you things you have forgotten, but I. I do not care.” He knots off the end of the braid and tucks it behind Link’s ear. “The yellow you remember was your feathers.”

It doesn’t _sound_ wrong, though maybe Link thinks it should. Part of his brain wonders if his Snowquil armour a century ago had been yellow, but the other part of him knows this isn’t quite right either. “The Rito mask.”

With a nod, Revali carefully weaves the ruby headpiece into the top of the braid. “Surely her highness would have saved them from the Calamity.”

“Did she know of them?”

A pause. “She did, at the end.”

This is not an answer, Link knows, but even he feels their time growing short; he pushes himself closer, wishing the Goddesses would just allow him this for a while longer. Surely he had earned it.

“Medoh says you cannot stay.”

“I know.”

“Will you face Ganon now?”

“Soon. I need to find the Master Sword.”

Revali nods against the top of his head, giving the smallest tug on his new braid. “You have my Gale, to aid you.”

Link jerks away. “You can’t.”

“You seem very sure of what I can and cannot do, Hylian,” he sneers, a poor imitation of his past contempt. “I assume the other champions gave you their gifts, and I will not be left out.”

“You’ve given me gifts,” Link says automatically, a hand going for the cord around his neck. 

Even as a ghost, Revali’s feathers betray his fluster, ruffled charmingly around his eyes. Link’s hand switches direction, suddenly desperate to smooth those feathers down, but he freezes halfway between them, hand outstretched.

Revali stares at him, as Link pinches his thumb and forefinger together and shakily uses them to trace Revali’s facepaint, somehow having survived even in death. Revali goes impossibly still underneath him, realisation lighting behind his eyes.

Medoh screams a warning, before Link’s hand dissolves against his cheek.

Elder Kaneli stops him at the edge of the village, wheezing like he had run all the way from his roost.

Link darts out a hand to steady him, and does feel bad that he had not said goodbye, but truthfully, he wants to run, to throw himself at Ganon and maybe hope he doesn’t survive.

His bones _ache_ at a hazy memory of Elder Ylla seeing him and Zelda off, right where Kaneli stands.

Clapping a wing on his shoulder, Kaneli smiles warmly as he catches his breath. “I’m glad I caught you, my boy! Saki told me you had already set out, and I was afraid I’d missed you.”

Link winces. _“I’m sorry,”_ he signs, even as Kaneli waves him off. _“Windblight Ganon was difficult, I didn’t want to...”_

He pats his shoulder. “Please do not apologise, Link, my boy; I cannot imagine what you went through atop Vah Medoh, and I will not ask you to explain. But I wanted to give you this before you left.”

Baffled, Link accepts a blanket-wrapped parcel that he had not noticed Kaneli carrying; except for Mipha’s armour, he had not received anything in thanks for freeing the Divine Beasts. 

With Kaneli watching benignly, he carefully unfolds the blanket, draping the excess over his arm as he goes. His fingers hit the edge of it before he can even see just what he’s been given, but oh, he knows that feel of paint over unknown wood.

His breath hitches and he almost doesn’t finish unwrapping it, but forces himself to under Kaneli’s steady gaze. Only when he’s faced with Llac’s bright gold feathers does Link let out his breath.

“You are not the Hero Link’s descendant, are you, my boy?” Kaneli asks quietly, only for them. Link gives a single shake of his head. “A woman dressed in Sheikah garb brought this to us soon after the Calamity; she said it was a ‘gift of hope’, and implied she had given similar gifts to all domains. I do not know if other leaders have kept them all these years, but the day I was made Elder, this mask was entrusted to me. I believe it belongs to you.”

“Thank you,” Link whispers hoarsely, running the pad of his finger down the ridge of Llac’s beak, as he had done his whole life. 

“You are welcome, Champion. Now, I won’t keep you from your travels, but there is one more thing I would like to discuss with you.”

Link avoids his eye and starts to wrap his mask back in the blanket, mentally preparing himself for another personal request, another favour to the people that he cannot refuse after having failed them. There are more problems in the world than Link knows how to fix, but it doesn’t stop people from asking, and it does not stop him from saying yes. 

But Elder Kaneli’s hand is gentle as it settles on Link’s arm. “I wanted to inquire about the feathers around your neck.”

He goes stock-still, fingers twisting into the edge of the blanket. Of course another Rito would know the meaning, would question why a barely-put-together Hylian had been deemed worthy enough to be bound to a Rito.

“I have no memory if you visited the village when I was a chick, but I remember Master Revali clearly.” And of course Revali’s plumage was just unique enough to be immediately recognisable, even after all these years. “My boy, did anything come of it?” Kaneli prompts gently. “I ask only because, if so, you are entitled to his remaining belongings. Harth has just finished restoring the Great Eagle Bow—”

Link’s hand flies out to stop him, doesn’t know if he can bear it, being told to take Revali’s _things._ “I-I am a Hylian,” is what he says instead, perhaps hoping to dissuade Kaneli from thinking so highly of him.

Kaneli’s grip on him tightens, his smile kind and playful all at once. “It is not unheard of, for a Rito to wed into other families.”

Link tucks the mask under his arm to free his other hand. _“But Revali was a Champion.”_

Kaneli throws his head back to laugh at this, drawing the attention of the closest Rito guard stood watch on the bridge behind them. “And so are you! Link, my boy, I do not understand just what you are trying to convince me of, but Elder Ylla used to say that he lost two sons, that day, so you’ll forgive me if I was not particularly surprised to see you wear Revali’s colours.”

This is not something Link wished to know, closing his eyes and inhaling shakily. Another friend he had failed, then. He has little memory of Ylla, but he knows who he had been to Revali, and knows he must have known about Link; not only had he let Ylla’s son die, he had robbed him of a proper partner, of a proper family.

If Kaneli understands any of this from his face, he makes so indication of it. Instead, he sighs and wishes Link luck, makes him promise to one day return. 

* * *

He stands at the Castle gate, at the edge of Zelda's barrier, and runs a hand along the Great Eagle Bow; the scrap of Revali's scarf, somehow still intact, shakes in the wind. Calamity Ganon screams, and Link steadies his breathing. One last battle, then he could rest. 

Then they could rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> was their engagement rushed? not for an era based on medieval Europe ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> (chapter titles retroactively added.)


End file.
